World Tibet Network News Monday, April 27, 1998

BBC, Monday, April 27, 1998

[A Tibetan rights activist is treated for burns after setting fire to himself in protest at police action ]

A Tibetan rights activist is treated for burns after setting fire to himself in protest at police action

Tibetan activists have accused the Indian Government of seeking to appease China by breaking up a hunger strike by Tibetan exiles in Delhi.

Police moved in to halt the protest on Monday. Officers forcibly hospitalised the last three hunger strikers, who were on the 49th day of their fast. One of their supporters set himself on fire in protest; he too was taken to hospital.

The demonstrators were calling for United Nations action to help end Chinese rule in Tibet.

[ image: A hunger striker waits for doctors to examine him]

The other three hunger strikers were removed from their tent and taken to hospital by the authorities on Sunday.

The intervention came after government doctors diagnosed all the hunger strikers as showing signs of chronic starvation.

The strikers had threatened to fast to their deaths. Since March 10 they had existed on a diet of water flavoured with lemon juice.

Tibetans outraged

Suicide is illegal in India. But Tibetan activists said the police's action had more to do with the arrival in the Indian capital of the chief of China's People's Liberation Army, General Fu Quanyou on a state visit, on Sunday.

The President of the Tibetan Youth Congress, Tseten Norbu, accused the Indian authorities of interfering with the hunger strike to appease China.

India has tried in recent years to improve relations with China, with whom it fought a border war in 1962. While it has offered a home in exile to Tibet's spiritual chief, the Dalai Lama, it has discouraged him from engaging in political activities while on Indian soil.

Plea to UN

The hunger strikers wanted the UN to send a special human-rights investigator to Tibet. They also asked it to supervise a referendum for determining whether Tibetans wanted independence, autonomy within China or some other status, and to resume a debate on Tibet in the UN General Assembly.

They addressed their demands to the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who replied that only member states could take up such questions.